Crazy wisdom from a messy life

Tom Robbins had no intention of writing a memoir. “I was conned into it by the women in my life,” he says with a laugh during a call to his home in the small town of La Conner, Washington.

“They had been pestering me to write down the stories that I’d been telling them—bidden and unbidden—over the years. I wrote 20 pages and showed it to them, thinking that would shut them up. But it had the opposite effect.”

Robbins' latest is another wild romp

I can safely say I'd given the sex life of badgers nary a thought until I read the first sentence of Tom Robbins' latest wacky whirlwind of a novel, Villa Incognito. Leave it to Robbins to begin his eighth book with a story about a mythical Japanese shape-shifting, sake-slurping animal with an incredibly strong sex drive, a scrotal sac large enough to serve as a parachute(!), and a...

Audio Column by Michael Sims

Tom Robbins: an outrageous writer in a politically correct era Tom Robbins believes in truth in advertising. His novels lure the adventurous and warn the timid with outrageous titles, which accurately predict outrageousness within. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Still Life with Woodpecker, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, Skinny Legs and All these are not your usual well-behaved titles of popular...

Tom Robbins: an outrageous writer in a politically correct era

Tom Robbins believes in truth in advertising. His novels lure the adventurous and warn the timid with outrageous titles, which accurately predict outrageousness within. Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, Still Life with Woodpecker, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, Skinny Legs and All -- these are not your usual well-behaved titles of popular novels. You...